WSJ's Neil King has details of the latest WSJ/NBC News poll showing growing support for President Obama's policies and waning support for congressional Republicans. Photo: Getty Images.

With deep federal spending cuts poised to begin Friday, Congress engaged in a new round of finger-pointing, intraparty bickering and frustration on Tuesday, at one point prompting top party leaders to hurl vulgarities at each other.

Senate Republicans, who usually find it easy to unite against President Barack Obama, found themselves unable to forge a united front over how to deal with the impeding budget cuts, with some proposing to give more budget power to a White House that most Republicans say they mistrust.

Amid the turmoil, House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) suggested members of the Senate should "get off their a—" to address the so-called sequester. That prompted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.)—who says he is used to salty language because his hometown of Searchlight, Nev., had 13 brothels—to return the insult.

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In more sober terms, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke delivered a warning about the consequences of congressional paralysis for fiscal issues. Mr. Bernanke, in testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, called on Congress to avert looming across-the-board spending cuts that he said would damage a still-weak economy.

If Congress doesn't act, the government will have to make $85 billion in across-the board defense and domestic cuts by Sept. 30.

Mr. Bernanke said Congress should replace the cuts with more gradual, long-term deficit-reduction measures. Not only would the cuts hurt hiring and incomes, they would slow the recovery, keeping deficits larger than otherwise, he said.

Mr. Bernanke cited Congressional Budget Office estimates that the cuts would reduce economic growth by 0.6 percentage point this year, which would cost the economy 750,000 jobs this year. The economy is only growing at a moderate pace, so that additional drag would be "significant," he said.

Mr. Bernanke took his slap at the policies being pursued by Congress and Mr. Obama on a day when both sides were digging in deeper than ever.

Mr. Boehner again reminded reporters that the House last year twice passed legislation to replace the cuts and called for the Senate to act on its own bill.

"We should not have to move a third bill before the Senate…begins to do something," Mr. Boehner said. Mr. Reid, noting that the House hadn't passed any bill during the current Congress, said House members were the ones with their behinds on the sidelines.

Mr. Obama, meanwhile, traveled to Newport News, Va., for a rally at a shipbuilding firm to spotlight the impact of the sequester on military operations and communities around them.

Republican leaders fumed. "Does he want to be president of a political party or does he want to be president of the United States?" said House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.).

But at the Virginia rally, Mr. Obama was joined by a local Republican representative, Scott Rigell, whose district would be hard-hit by defense cuts and who has shown some willingness to consider a tax-increase compromise.

Back in Washington, Senate Republicans were preparing a proposal to give the Obama administration more flexibility to administer the cuts to blunt their impact. But they struggled to reach consensus because some didn't want to give more power to the administration. And as it turned out, Mr. Obama said at the Virginia rally he didn't want that power because "flexibility" couldn't mitigate the harm of cutting $85 billion in a mere seven months. "There's no smart way to do that," he said.

Meantime, immigration officials said Tuesday they had released hundreds of immigrants who had been detained and were awaiting deportation proceedings to cut costs in advance of the sequester.

Gillian Christensen, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said officials reviewed cases and released hundreds of people "on methods of supervision less costly than detention" as the agency continues to seek their removal from the U.S.

The decision was sharply criticized by House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, who said the Obama administration is using sequestration as an excuse to carry out a "de facto catch-and-release policy" it had already planned to implement.

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